denise...on a whim: Chippy Dresser with Hinged Front

Today I'm sharing my first chippy piece of furniture with you. I really love the chippy look, but I've never tried my hand at it before. I really like the way it turned out and I hope you do too! Let's have a peek, shall we...

I picked up this dresser from a church rummage sale. Actually, a friend picked it up and delivered it for me! I don't know what I'd do without my friends and their trucks! :)

In the pictures she sent me from the sale, the dresser looked white. But, once I looked at it in person, I could see it was a pretty, barely-there blue. I know, you can't tell from the pictures either, can you? Well, believe me, it's definitely a very light shade of blue. :)

The more I looked at it, the more I liked that light blue. So I decided to keep it. The problem was, it was chipping here and there, especially on the legs. Whoever had painted it had used latex paint right over the original stained finish. And it just wasn't sticking very well...

So, I decided to work with what I had. If the thing wanted to chip, I figured maybe I'd help it along a little!

I took out the drawers, got out my scraper and went to work! I decided I would scrap it in the same areas that I would normally use sandpaper to distress a project. I always try to imagine where a piece would get the most wear and tear and work in those areas. So I scraped the edges, corners and raised areas the most, thinking a piece of furniture would likely get bumped there most often. It was really very easy work with the latex paint someone had used. Not much elbow grease required!

After I had the frame all chipped and ready to go, I set to work on the drawers. Well, at least 3 of the drawers. I'll get to that 4th one in a bit. I painted the 3 in ASCP Aubusson Blue. You know already that it's one of my favorites and I knew I would love it with that lightest of blue shades that was already on the rest of the dresser.

I also painted the insides of the drawers, though I guess I never got a picture. I used CeCe Caldwell's Virginia Chestnut for that. I thought the brown would compliment all the chippy areas on the outside of the dresser very nicely.

After I painted the drawer fronts, I distressed them with a damp cloth so the light blue would show through.

As you can see here, 3 drawers are painted in Aubusson and one is left the original pale blue. I kept the knobs on the 3 Aubusson drawers the original color and painted the knobs on the pale blue drawer in Aubusson, distressing those after painting.

Now, to explain about that 4th drawer...

Apparently it had broke at some point. It's previous owners had tried to fix it but, unfortunately, did not do a very good job. They had replaced the back of the drawer with a piece of particle board. Ummm, yeah. It wasn't a very nice match, that's for sure. And, not only did they use particle board, they used a piece that was too short for the height of the drawer and when they glued it onto the drawer bottom, it caused the bottom to warp terribly so that the drawer wouldn't slide in and out of the dresser.

I have fixed drawers before, like on my friend Karlye's antique dresser. So that was an option. But this one was in pretty bad shape. And, to be honest, I felt lazy and just didn't want to fix it. :)

But, of course, I couldn't sell the dresser to someone in that condition. So I thought I would remove the drawer altogether and put a shelf there instead. Maybe add a few baskets like I have seen done before. Dressers are very cute with an open area for baskets. Sounded like a pretty good plan to me, and much easier than fixing that drawer! :)

So Eric cut a board to fit and I glued and tacked it into place. I painted the inside in CeCe Caldwell's Vintage White, as you can see here.

But, somehow, in true me-fashion, the easy part of the plan sort of went out the window. I got to thinking and decided it would be cute if we took the front of that raggedy old drawer, put some hinges on it, and made it into a flip-down front for that shelf. What do you think...

...do you like it?

I figured this way, you can have it open if you'd like, for displaying things, or you can close it and hide stuff in there instead, for storing things. Of course, like I said earlier, with this idea, an easy fix sort of went out the window. Turning this into a hinged front required some planing, some cutting, a little sanding, more hardware, blah, blah, blah...